Traditional style tattoo of a woman's face with red cheeks and a banner beneath it, on the top of a foot above a tan leather sandal.

Traditional woman portrait on ankle

Traditional · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of two bare feet in tan leather sandals, with navy nail polish on the toes. On the right foot, near the ankle, is a traditional style tattoo of a woman's face with dark hair, red cheeks and a small banner with lettering beneath. The tattoo uses bold black outlines and flat colour in red, green and skin tones, and the feet stand on a dark blue carpet.

Traditional Ankle Woman Portrait Banner Lettering Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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We came in on the morning tide with the Kestrel's hold half empty and my hands still stinging from the rope. I went straight up Canning Street because Joe Trant swore the flash sheets in Cass Mulcahy's back room were the finest in Liverpool. He was right about the cheeks, anyway. The lady on the top row has red painted on each one as if she's been out in the wind, and her dark hair is swept back like she's heard a joke she won't repeat.

Cass saw me looking and said she was drawn in 1938 for a bosun who wanted his sweetheart on his arm and his name nowhere near it. The banner underneath was blank. "Give her a line," he said, "something the sea can't argue with." I wrote TO SEA on a scrap of paper and he laughed so hard he had to sit down, then he inked it in his tidy capitals, which I think is the closest I'll get to a promise from anyone in that shop.

The needles hummed like a kettle that never quite boils. Every time I flinched, Cass told me the lady had sat through worse, and I suspect that's true of most women on that wall. Afterwards he wiped the red with a cloth that smelt of methylated spirit and held up the mirror so I could see her looking back at me, unbothered by the whole business.

I'm writing this with my foot up on the bunk, the ink still a bit raw. Cass says the banner is the only part of the picture that will ever be finished, so keep a space under the words for me to come home and fill in. Your loving, Tom